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suraj.sun writes "AT&T and Comcast, two of the nation's largest Internet service providers, are expected to be among a group of ISPs that will cooperate with the music industry in battling illegal file sharing, three sources close to the companies told CNET News. The RIAA said last month that it had enlisted the help of ISPs as part of a new antipiracy campaign. The RIAA has declined to identify which ISPs or how many. It's important to note that none of the half dozen or so ISPs involved has signed agreements. But as it stands, AT&T and Comcast are among the companies that have indicated they wish to participate in what the RIAA calls a 'graduated response program.'"

No idea if this still holds true, but Verizon was the company that refused to hand over their logs to the RIAA all those years ago. They certainly earned my respect at the time, and they still have my business.

You're probably right. I do quite a bit of consulting for K-12 schools; the watchword there is that once you attempt to filter content, you'd better filter perfectly, as you're responsible for anything that gets past.
Does this translate into sanctioning your own users for inappropriate actions? I think it does.

By dealing with the RIAA at all the ISPs are making a huge mistake. Is my utility company liable if I install grow lamps and start a marijuana farm because they failed to alert the authorities about the power increase? Is my phone company liable if I start calling the state prison regularly and it turns out that I'm organizing to have an informant killed because they weren't monitoring my phone records and didn't recommend a phone tap?

By playing along even in a small role, the ISPs are really stepping in it...

I could be wrong, but if there is a spike in usage of water or power, utility companies will inform police of a possible grow op.

This too shall pass. A couple of observations. First, P2P accounts for between one-third and four-fifths of internet traffic, depending on the entities collecting the data and the regions from where the data is collected. Either way, it seems like a lot. Second, internet usage continues to grow. People love YouTube, just wait until the quality improves. How many people are watching Netflix's Watch Now as a result of if being available on so many systems? Third, the economy will prevent many, if not most, ISPs from adding additional bandwidth. Thus, in order to keep up with increased legitimate demand without adding more capacity, it makes since that ISPs would want to reduce demand from file sharing. Simple, really.

Verizon passed the notice/letter on to you rather than giving your information to the RIAA/MPAA so that you could be named in a lawsuit. What happened to you is far more preferable than the other option. But if you don't want to believe that, that's up to you.

No but the GP is close. The power company does look for odd balancing issues vs power usage. People who grow large quanities of dope tend to be a bit stupid and cheap. Including putting a couple thousand watts of lights on a single circuit in their basement. The in balanced loadis noticed by the power companies. Normally as long as you pay your bill they don'tcare. However the stupid and cheap part comes into play. They forget to pay their bill. And police eventually get called.

They cannot enter your house unless the electrical meter is located inside your house.

The power company owns everything up to the meter, beyond that it belongs to the owners. They are permitted to enter your property lines to service up till that point (including checking the meter).

The stupid part however is that large scale urban growers generally steal power, there have been instances where some have tapped directly into the grid lines and bypass the meter. This will usually result in the power company noticing something amiss when the total amount of billed power for the residents is far less then the amount of power that had been supplied to the area.

These people are usually candidates for darwin awards as there are no safeguards in place (assuming they did not explode when they tried to steal the power in the first place...

We all became Citizens in 1983 [wikipedia.org]. The only British subjects left are people who were a British subjects on 31 December 1948 who did not become a citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies, a citizen of a Commonwealth country, a citizen of Pakistan, or a citizen of the Republic of Ireland (and had made a claim to remain a British subject in 1948).

As far as I can tell, this only increases their liability. Services providers have typically received immunity from the actions of their users, so long as there is a clear line between the service provider and the actions of their users.

What you are referring to is "Common Carrier" status. It prevents companies like UPS from being criminally liable for shipping cocaine, for example, overseas. It also prevents Telcoms from being liable for carrying information used to conduct criminal activities. If they actually get involved, though, they lose common carrier, and thus can become sued (or charged) for anything that occurs over their network.

That decision against thermal-imaging cameras is quite silly, wouldn't that mean cops would need a warrant to look through your window?

No. It's based on "expectation of privacy". If you do something in front of a window that's open to the street, there's no real expectation of privacy. If you do something in your windowless bathroom, the expectation is that it won't be seen. If the cops look into your closed up garage, whether they use IR/thermographic imaging, X-rays, sonographic imaging, or a code scanner that opens your garage door, if they do so without a warrant, that crosses the line. Of course if they can convincingly say they thought it was allowed and it was "an honest mistake" when they violated your 4th Amd rights, the supreme court says that's OK.